The California Supreme
Court yesterday unanimously upheld the death penalty for an East Palo Alto woman, rejecting claims
that police used a pretextual burglary investigation to obtain a warrant to
search for evidence she was involved in two homicides.

The justices affirmed a
San Mateo Superior Court judge’s sentencing of Celeste Carrington for the
murders of Victor Esparza, a janitor at a San Carlos shoe factory, and Carolyn Gleason, a property
manager at a Palo
Alto real
estate firm, in two separate incidents in 1992.

Jurors found, as special
circumstances, that the defendant committed multiple murders and that both
murders occurred during the commission of robbery and burglary, and found her
guilty of robbery and burglary of both murder victims. Both murders occurred at
businesses where Carrington worked as a janitor.

She was also convicted
of robbery, burglary and attempted murder in the shooting of pediatrician Allan
Marks in his Redwood City office—Marks survived and testified at the trial—and
of five other burglaries.

The high court affirmed
all of the convictions except as to two of the burglaries. Those convictions
were based on the use of stolen ATM cards, which does not constitute burglary
of the ATM machine under an intervening Supreme Court decision.

Carrington was arrested
days after the Marks shooting. Her apartment was searched pursuant to warrants
obtained by the Los
Altos, Palo Alto and Redwood City police, and evidence
tying her to the crimes with which she was later charged was seized.

The Los Altos police obtained the
first warrant, which was based on evidence linking Carrington to two burglaries
unrelated to the charges for which she was ultimately tried. They were joined
in the search by Palo
Alto
officers who were investigating the Gleason homicide, and who subsequently
obtained their own warrant and conducted a second search.

Carrington was
confronted with the evidence and confessed. The Redwood City police then obtained a
third warrant and seized additional items.

The evidence seized
included a gun that was stolen from a Redwood City car dealer. Testing established that the
firearm had been used to shoot Esparza, Gleason and Marks.

Prior to trial, the
defense attempted to suppress the evidence, arguing that the Los Altos police
used their burglary investigation as an improper means of assisting the Palo
Alto officers in searching for evidence of a homicide, even though they lacked
sufficient evidence at the time to obtain their own warrant. Evidence presented
at the suppression hearing revealed that Carrington was a suspect in a number
of crimes in San
Mateo and
Santa Clara counties and that
several police departments were sharing information about the cases.

Superior Court Judge
Margaret J. Kemp ruled that the Los Altos warrant was supported by probable
cause, that the Palo Alto officers did nothing improper in accompanying their
Los Altos colleagues during the first search, and that because the first search
was valid and produced admissible evidence, the previous lack of probable cause
to believe that Carrington was involved in a homicide did not invalidate the
subsequent warrants.

Carrington presented no
defense in the guilt phase of her trial. In the penalty phase, prosecutors
presented testimony regarding the impact of the crimes on the victims, and of
an attempt by Carrington to escape from jail. The defense argued that
Carringon’s life should be spared because she had a chaotic family life,
including sexual abuse by her father beginning at age seven; had been under
pressure to support her lover and her lover’s three children; and suffered from
profound depression.

Chief Justice Ronald M.
George, writing yesterday for the Supreme Court, said the trial judge was
correct in denying the motion to suppress. “Officers from another jurisdiction
may accompany officers conducting a search pursuant to a warrant without
tainting the evidence (pertaining to crimes that are the subject of their own
investigation) uncovered in the process, even when the officers lack probable
cause to support issuance of their own search warrant,” the chief justice
wrote.

George rejected a number
of other arguments, including the claim that officers implied that Carrington
would not be charged with the Esparza murder if she confessed to it. It was
clear to Carrington that the decision on what charges would be filed would be
made by the prosecutors and not the police, the chief justice explained, and a
suggestion that any mitigating circumstances—such as the possibility Carrington
was taken by surprise and did not intend to shoot the victim—would be taken
into account did not constitute a promise of leniency.

The chief justice also
rejected the contention that the conviction was tainted by the systematic
exclusion of persons over the age of 70 from the grand jury.

Under court rules, George
explained, no adult is excused from jury service based solely on age, but
persons over the age of 70 have the right to claim exemption based on physical
or mental impairment without providing supporting documentation.

In Carrington’s case,
the chief justice noted, defense counsel showed that deputy clerks in San Mateo
Superior Court may have improperly excused potential jurors over the age of 70
without their claiming exemption.

George also pointed out,
however, that there is no California authority for the position that senior citizens are a
distinctive group for purposes of determining whether a jury was drawn from a
fair cross-section of the population. And even if they are, he declared, there
is no basis to depart from the usual rule that irregularities in the selection
of the grand jury do not require reversal of a conviction absent a showing of
prejudice.

He distinguished Vasquez
v. Hillary (1986) 474 U.S.
254, holding that deliberate racial bias in the selection of a grand jury
requires reversal of an ensuing conviction regardless of prejudice. The high
court “has not extended the requirement of automatic reversal to other defects
in the grand jury process,” George noted.

“In contrast to the
deliberate racial discrimination addressed in Vasquez v. Hillary...the
unwarranted exemption of some persons over the age of 70 years as a result of
errors committed by court clerks is not the type of ‘evil’ that requires or
justifies the extreme remedy of automatic reversal of a criminal conviction
obtained as the result of a fair trial,” George wrote. “Indeed, in the present
case the superior court’s practices regarding excusal of jurors over 70 years
of age were discontinued shortly before the hearing.”